The new Weinstein period piece Shanghai has enlisted Mr. Ken Watanabe to join the ranks. We get the following scoop thanks to the professionals at Variety:
The Weinstein Co. has set Ken Watanabe to join John Cusack and Gong Li in “Shanghai,” a period drama that will begin shooting in China next month. Mikael Hafstrom, who helmed Cusack in the Dimension hit “1408,” will direct a script by Hossein Amini. The drama, set four months prior to Dec. 7, 1941, follows an American who returns to a corrupt, Japan-occupied Shanghai to discover his friend has been killed. While trying to solve the murder, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.
I am not into investigative dramas, they do not excite me and seldom do I desire to see one. Lust, Caution took place in Japanese occupied Shanghai, and that time and place certainly seems full of stories. I am more interested in the city than I am about a murder investigation. I hope we are immersed in the history of the place rather than just having Shanghai stand as a backdrop to a cop film.
I enjoy both Cusack and Watanabe and it will be interested to see the two work together. This is a pairing that seems strange, but could work, time will tell. Shanghai is currently filming in Shanghai (surprise!) and is scheduled for a release date of 2009.
